Friday, 15 March 2013

Last-Week Links: 15 March 2013

My first collection of links since getting back to the UK and it's a mini one: I'm still catching up on a fortnight of emails! Internet overload makes for me not sleeping very well (bad) but means I get to listen to random 6 music documentaries (very good). This week: On My Way: The Dean Parrish Story. Dean Parrish is best known in the UK for "I'm On My Way", rediscovered and championed by Northern Soul DJs in the 1970s, to the extent it made the UK Top 40 in 1975. All without the knowledge of Parrish.

It wasn't until the early 2000s that Parrish was tracked down (under his real name Phil Anastasi) and brought over to Britain to perform to thousands of avid fans at ... (my beloved) Cleethorpes. The documentary captures the oddness of this first appearance beautifully. It also made me go back and bemoan the loss of Cleethorpes' Winter Gardens. Built in the 1930s, and subsequently home to many Northern Soul nights in the 70s and weekenders since then, it was torn down by the council about six years ago to make way for flats. Which have yet to be built. Sigh.

There's a bit of a British/US cross-over theme going on in my links for this week. The New York Times highlighted the New York shop, the End of History: a stunning collection of over 10,000 pieces of midcentury ceramics and glass run by a man who grew up on the Isle of Wight. The stock is organised in a stunning fashion, by colour and shape, as Deedee9:14's pictures from her recent visit demonstrate beautifully. Inspiring stuff.

Talking of interiors inspiration, last week my friend and I went on LivingEtc's south London home tours. We've both lived all over south London over the last ten years, so it was fascinating to see what little kingdoms had been carved out just around the corner of streets we knew so well. Unfortunately it was a very rainy day. You can see us looking a bit wet and bedraggled, exaggerating slightly about our choice in home decor but, most importantly, looking very cheery on the Life.Style.Etc blog.

Finally, a mini plug for a new series I've started on Domestic Sluttery: Something Old, Something New, matching up vintage originals with contemporary reinterpretations. I looked at shift dresses for this first one: the possibilities across homewares, as well as fashion, are endless.

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Visualize yourself as you looked on a beautiful autumn day last year. There's not much of the picture that survives. Not the hemline, waistline or the shoulderline ... If you're not a Last-Year Girl. You'll like the feel of a longer, fuller skirt flowing around you as you move ... You'll enjoy having hips again - without apologies; and the satisfaction of a small, rounded, tapering waist and of having it show in the snug bodice tops. You can have it all.